"Where were you yesterday?"

I was home. In the sunshine. On a snow day: no school on Valentine's Day!

It was very peculiar. We got barely an inch or so of snow overnight, but many of the local schools were closed. Including ours. This was very disappointing to a kid who was anticipating a holiday party.

It was SUNNY all day. I had to go pay the property taxes, so first we had to get out of the driveway. That was the second-hardest part. The roads were clear and dry everywhere I went, from the bank to the township hall, and past the darkened school building.

The hardest part was getting back into the driveway. Downhill in snow is easy, sometimes too easy when I think about that deep ditch on either side of the end of the driveway. Uphill is not so easy. The drifts I had punched right through going out, I had to chop up and shovel out of the way to get back in.

By the time I was done shovelling my way in, I was simultaneously hot and sweaty, with my hat sticking my hair to my forehead, and freezing, with numb fingers and toes.

My hands did eventually warm up enough to knit a little.

I worked on this double-knitted hat, knit so both sides look "knitted", according to the same pattern as the blue waffle scarf. (That is, K1, P1, slip 1 with yarn in back, slip 1 with yarn in front, repeat until hands complain.)

If you use as your number of starting stitches "any odd number x 2", this 4-stitch repeat auto-magically switches layers as you knit around. That means on the second round you end up slipping the stitches you knitted and knitting the stitches you slipped on the first round without having to do anything except follow the 4-stitch pattern.

When the hat felt too heavy, I switched to socks and worked a couple of rows.

In between, I filled birdfeeders, administered hot cocoa to our son, who is definitely a "snow dog" like his mother, and basked in the sunshine.

And today I'm especially glad about the basking in the sunshine: